Working Bullocks by Katharine Susannah Prichard

Author:Katharine Susannah Prichard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ligature Pty Limited
Published: 2021-11-09T10:55:38+00:00

Chapter XX

When he rode into the bullock yards on Monday morning the men were surprised to see Red Burke. Blue Flowers races had been on Saturday, and he was last seen going off among the trees towards July Creek. It had been taken for granted no one, except perhaps Wally Burke, would see or hear anything of Red for a while.

If he had been drinking he was still more drunk with his own dark mood. The rage that had been consuming him was in his eyes, his face wrung by it. He looked as the bush does when a fire has passed through, blasted and blackened. His eyes were bloodshot; the stubble of a two days’ growth was on his chin and jaws.

No one wanted to speak to him, so sombre, half mad, he seemed, though he stared at each and all of the men at the Six Mile in a queer unashamed way, lifting his lips to smile with more of a snarl than a smile, as if he were saying, ‘Well, here I am. What are you going to do about it?’ He was not ashamed; he did not repent, he wished to assure them.

The men did not know what to make of it or Red and the way he carried himself all those days at the end of the summer. For months afterwards he ran amuck, brawling and drinking with anyone who would brawl and drink with him, swaggering assurance in his bearing, a would-be good fellowship which went sour on him, was all aggressive rancour when he was drunk.

In Karri Creek people reminded each other of the saying, ‘There never was a good Burke.’

Races had been queered in the Karri before the Boss lost the Blue Flowers Plate. Fallers, teamsters, mill-workers, farmers, countrymen of all sorts had always been game for the racing touts, confidence men and bookmakers who come among them, and the country folk believed it was a fair thing to get back on the city crooks sometimes when they got the chance.

‘We’re all good mates here,’ they would explain, fixing a race or a chop before the event. ‘We don’t want to do each other.’

If Red Burke had gone round before the race telling his mates to lay off on Lady Lucy he knew they would not have minded the Boss weighing in light so much. But there had been no time to do that. His mind had set itself to carry out the only plan he could devise quickly for the Boss to lose the race. He had to work against the tempestuous resentment and disappointment assailing him, and could think of nothing else.

Later as he stood by the fence watching the race Red hoped in a vague unbelieving way his mates would give him the benefit of a doubt, that they would guess there was some reason behind what he had done. He had got nothing out of it. Any of them would have done what he had, he assured himself. There was nothing else to do.

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